The New England Regional Center of Excellence will use the Developmental Projects Fund to promote innovative, cutting edge research in areas that may yield discoveries that would translate into the creation of new vaccines, therapeutics and/or diagnostics to combat Category A-C select agents. The Developmental Projects Fund will be invested in research projects with the greatest potential to grow to full NERCE research programs or to projects that would be competitive for traditional NIH funding. Given the relatively short duration of support (two years or less) and the relatively small investment ($100,000/year or less), the Developmental Projects will be more risky and require less preliminary data than conventional "RO1"-like grants. Developmental Project funds will also be used to help established New England Category A-C investigators take advantage of the NERCE Core Facilities. Since existing grants do not have budgets to accommodate use of these cores, these investigators will be encouraged to apply for Developmental Project funding to expand their research plans. The fund will be used to attract investigators who are not working in the area of biodefense to begin research programs on category A-C agents and to attract investigators from institutions and companies that are not participating in the NERCE. Finally, the Developmental Projects Fund will be used to encourage collaborations among investigators, particularly between basic and clinical research laboratories and between traditional microbiology laboratories and investigators in other basic science disciplines (e.g. immunologists, cell biologists, chemical biologists, bioinformaticists). In order to create the most fertile environment for discovery, developmental funds will be used to make strategic investments in projects of high risk but potentially high return preferentially over conventional small grants that are more likely to attract traditional NIH funding.